Otter poop to help compensate fish farmers

Evaluating otter poop is not a job everyone would want, but it may be the key to saving the elusive creature from angry farmers who would have their hides for eating fish stocks.

In crowded parts of the world, such as Europe, where it is hard for predators to avoid falling foul of humans and their farms, governments can protect endangered species by compensating farmers for the damage. For example, the state of Saxony in Germa-ny pays fish farmers if local otters - whose populations are still recovering after decades of decline due to water pollution - grab a snack. But in order to calculate the payments, the government needs a way to verify how many otters are plundering each pond. And the animals are notoriously hard to watch.

So Simone Lampa and colleagues at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany, turned to otter faeces in an ...

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